


Impossible Hugs and Birthday Things

by unvsval



Series: Gandrew Month [13]
Category: Video Blogging RPF, sweetboys - Fandom
Genre: I Made Myself Cry, M/M, TW: suicidal thoughts, so i apologize for this one, sorry - Freeform, tw: abuse, tw: death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:01:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27535696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unvsval/pseuds/unvsval
Summary: Andrew and Garrett meet at the hospital.TRIGGER WARNING: Suicidal Thoughts, Abuse, and Death
Relationships: Andrew Siwicki/Garrett Watts
Series: Gandrew Month [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1992847
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	Impossible Hugs and Birthday Things

**Author's Note:**

> Gandrew Month day 12  
> prompt: Mind Your Manners  
> playlist:  
> i'll be good - jaymes young  
> the night we met - lord huron  
> bruises - lewis capaldi

Age Six, 1998

Andrew was seated at the dinner table, his feet knocking together as he swung them back and forth. A small pile of dirt on the otherwise clean floor gathered beneath him as the mud from playing outside fell off his shoes. 

His older brother, Jordan sat at the head of the table. Jordan and their father always sat at opposite sides. Andrew didn’t know it at the time, but as he grew older he came to realize that Jordan did this out of self-preservation. Jordan sat at the opposite end of the table to put more people and space between him and his father for those times that Roger Siwicki had a little too much to drink. 

Their father wasn’t at the table when their mom came into the room with food. She placed a casserole dish of lasagne on the table and went back to the kitchen to grab a big bowl of steamed vegetables. 

“Alrighty.” She dusted her hands off on her little half-apron, “Jay? How was your day, hon?”She didn’t sit, just stood off to the side of the table with her hands crossed politely. 

“It was alright, Ma.” Jordan shook his head like that was all he had to say, but he had told Andrew about his day on the walk back home from school earlier. Andrew knew that Jordan had not only aced the math test he was worried about, but he’d also befriended a pretty girl, he said, named melody. 

“No,” He spoke up. His head just barely made it past the edge of the table and had he been more mature he wouldn’t have asked them to take away the small step stool he used to sit on. 

His family turned to look at him. His mother wore a sharp glare and Andrew caved in on himself a little bit. “Mind your manners, Andrew; don’t speak out of turn.” Andrew shrunk down. The weight of his mother’s stare pushing him back into his seat and making him feel as tall as he was before he’d hit his recent growth spurt. 

He felt small, “Sorry, Ma.”

She stared him down a moment before nodding. She turned to Jordan with her lips pursed, “I thought you taught him the rules.”

Jordan almost felt the need to wave his hands in a placating manner but thought it might do more harm than good. He kept them tight at his sides, gripping the seam line on his jeans just in case, “I did, promise, he just forgets them.”

“Well, make sure he doesn’t forget!”

Age Ten, 2002

“Andrew, you can’t run off like that.” His brother walked up with a nonchalance that almost bothered Andrew. 

“Why?” He asked bitterly from the swing set. There were two behind the library. Andrew swung back and forth with the weight of his foot that rested on the mulch below him as his brother-only fifteen and definitely illegally-lit a cigarette. 

“You make it worse for yourself that way.”

They didn’t look at each other. The sun was setting and filling the sky with a weird greyish purple. It wasn’t necessarily vibrant or bright, but it made Andrew squint. 

Jordan was right and Andrew knew that-he had the bruises to prove it-but that didn’t mean that Andrew didn’t sigh a heavy breath of relief when he made it past the front door, it didn’t mean that Andrew didn’t run as fast as he could when he managed to wrangle the doorknob out of his father’s grip, it didn’t mean that Andrew wasn’t scared that his father was going to be the one to come and take him back home. 

They sat in silence until Jordan finished his cigarette, throwing the butt on the ground and stomping it with the heel of his ratty boots. He spoke up a second later, “We should get back.”

“Yeah,” Andrew sighed, “okay.”

Age Twelve, 2004

Unfortunately, Andrew knew his arm was broken the moment it happened. His father had handled him too roughly. He had an oddly angled grip on Andrew’s arm when he pulled the boy out of the way. Andrew almost screamed, but that was against the rules and he figured just a broken arm was better than whatever his father would have decided to give him to go along with it had he made any noise above the appropriate house-level. 

It wasn’t the first time it had happened, and Andrew doubted it would be the last. He was allowed to pick the color of his cast, though. He supposed that was supposed to be cool, but he’d numbed himself to everything the moment the doctor lifted his arm to check the injury.

“Oh, that’s not a nice bruise,” she prodded gently at the bruise on Andrew’s shoulder. She was checking to make sure the break didn’t travel farther while they all waited on the X-rays to get back to them. Andrew froze instantly. 

“Yeah,” His father laughed from where he leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, “these kids and their bikes, you know?”

The doctor didn’t question it but she knew the bruise hadn’t come from any bike. Andrew made his cast blue and was honestly astounded the moment that the doctor said they had three different blues. He chose light blue excitedly.

“Mind your manners, Andrew. Don’t hurt the good doctor’s ears.” His dad said. 

Age Thirteen, 2005

Andrew almost felt betrayed as he watched his brother’s U-Haul drive away. Don’t get him wrong, he was proud of his brother, Andrew didn’t think that he would ever get out of the house himself so he was glad he was able to live vicariously through his older brother. 

The proud feeling only lasted for two months. Of course, it happened on his birthday. 

“Jordan!” Andrew rushed to his brother as their mom talked to the doctor. Melody, Jordan’s long-time girlfriend, sat in one of the chairs to the side of the hospital bed.

“Hey! Happy birthday, buddy!” Jordan returned the hug that Andrew was giving him and when his little brother didn’t let go, Jordan scooted over to make room for him. 

Turns out that Jordan had a tumor in his leg. It was affecting his ability to walk and Melody thought that he should get it checked out. Everyone was glad she pushed him to do so. Andrew had begged his mother to the point of a freshly formed bruise on his spine and collarbone to let him come visit his brother. 

“You okay?” Andrew tucked himself into his brother’s arm. 

“Yeah, I’ll be alright.” 

Andrew didn’t bother to mention that what Jordan said implied that he wasn’t okay and that meant that he’d lied to him.

He was shaken awake a few hours later, his mother standing over him with a tight-lipped smile.

“Andrew, go get something from the vending machines, okay?” She handed him a couple of bills and Andrew hesitated. This could be a trick. Sometimes she or his dad would offer him a few bills and when he went to grab it, they’d snatch it away at the last second. 

Jordan grabbed the money from her and handed it to Andrew, knowing that the smaller boy’s thoughts, “Here, man. Ooh! See if you can smuggle me in some peanut M&Ms!”

Andrew took the money and shut the door behind him as he stepped out into the hall. The vending machine was kind of hard to find and soon he asked a boy sitting outside of some room where a girl was screaming. 

“Do you, uhm, do you know where the vending machine is?” 

The boy looked up and pulled his sleeve over the bracelet he’d been fiddling with, he smiled at Andrew, “Sure! Do you want me to show you?”

Andrew nodded, no longer one for words when a nod could do the same job. The other boy seemed excited to have something to do besides sitting in a chair. The vending machine was actually in the opposite direction of where Andrew headed and he took notice of the closed door to his brother’s room and frowned. 

“Hey, are you alright? You look a little sad.” The other boy, Garrett, he had said earlier, turned to Andrew with a frown of his own. 

Andrew nodded, “I’m just worried about my brother.” 

He didn’t say anything else about it and Garrett let it slide as they came upon the vending machines.

“Here you go!” He pointed excitedly. 

“Thank you,” Andrew tried to smile at the boy, but the rust on those muscles was heavy. 

“No problem. Hey! Do you mind if I sit with you outside of the room your brother is in? My mom won’t mind.”

Andrew thought about it while he grabbed his snacks from the retrieval area. His mother was surely going to be a while and his brother’s M&Ms could wait. He shrugged, “Sure”   


Age Fifteen. 2007

“They have to amputate your leg.” Andrew didn’t look up from the floor. He stood by the door with his hands shoved deep into his pockets.

Jordan sighed, “Yeah, they think it can help stop the spread.”

Andrew nodded, smudging away a mark on the floor with the toe of his shoe, “Yeah, that-that makes sense.”

Jordan sighed and ran his hand over where his hair used to be with a wince, “Andrew.”

“Look,” The younger man interrupted, “I just came to make sure you were alright, Ma’s only let me have the car for an hour, so.” He threw his thumb over his shoulder and Jordan nodded. 

“Yeah. Yeah, alright. I’ll see you later, buddy.”

Andrew shut the door behind him with a light click. He clenched his eyes shut real tight so as to not let the tears fall. He’d lied, his mother actually didn’t know he had the car and it made him feel shitty. 

Andrew almost wished that Jordan had lung cancer. With lung cancer, he could at least pretend it was the cigarettes’ fault that his brother had been in and out of a hospital more than Andrew had ever been growing up, which was saying something. 

“You alright?” 

Andrew opened his eyes to find Garrett sat in one of the chairs off to the side of the door Andrew just closed. Andrew shook his head, “No. I’m terrified.”

“That’s okay,” Garrett smiled calmly at him, “You’re allowed to feel scared.”

“Yeah?”

Garrett nodded. A moment of what would have been silence had they not been in a hospital passed before Andrew spoke up,

“I thought your mom was doing better?” 

Garrett sighed and looked off to the side before smiling sadly at Andrew, “Yeah, she’s fine. It’s my sister this time; she’s just had her baby.”

“Dude!” Andrew was happy for his friend, “That’s awesome!”

“Yeah,” Garrett said tightly but Andrew was too busy imagining what a little Garrett would look like to notice.

Age Seventeen, 2009

Andrew walked into the hospital with an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. His mother was already upstairs and was waiting on him, her phone call just said that she needed him there and offered no other explanation. 

The fact that she had actually  _ asked _ instead of just told him immediately triggered Andrew’s fight or flight and he sat in the parking lot for a solid seven minutes before making it out of the car. 

“Andrew!” His mother cried and it alarmed Andrew that tears were streaming down her face. There was yelling from behind the door she was in front of. Jordan’s door. 

“Ma? What’s going on?” His voice shook. 

“I don’t know! They just said that something was wrong and then he-” She muffled her sob with her wrist. Andrew selfishly thought that she shouldn’t be allowed to cry for a son she had raised a hand against. The thought came and went with the sound of yelling in Jordan’s room.

For the first time ever, the hospital was quiet. No nurses, no muffled TV shows, no clunking of the vending machine, no beeping. The last one registered in Andrew’s mind.  _ No beeping.  _

Andrew felt his soul basically leave his body as the nurses and doctors flooded out of his brother’s room. Their faces drained whatever hop Andrew had been hanging onto since he entered the hospital as he came to the realization that his brother had died. 

He didn’t wait for the doctor to reach him or his mother before he ran off. 

_ Happy Birthday to me. _ He thought bitterly as tears ran down his face and soon he was slowing down in an unfamiliar hallway because his body was shaking too hard with sobs. 

“Andrew?” Garrett came around the corner and found the shorter man hunched towards the floor, sobs and gasps escaping him. At the sound of Garrett's voice, Andrew looked up and crumpled into the taller boy’s arms. 

“ _ Please,  _ take me away from here!”

Garrett let the most bittersweet smile he could manage spread across his face, “I wish I could, but I can’t leave the hospital.”

“Why?!” Andrew shook his arms desperately. 

Garrett looked down at his arms and pulled up his sleeve. He turned the red band he was wearing so Andrew could see it. 

Andrew frowned at the date.

“Because I already did.” A single tear ran down Garrett’s face, “Garrett Watts. Time of death 1:24 am. August 7th, 2005.”

The band didn’t actually say all of that, but it made-unfortunately-sense. It made sense and Andrew  _ didn’t like it.  _


End file.
